Saint Martin Trần Ngọc Thọ

Martin Trần Ngọc Thọ was born in 1787 in the village of Kẻ Báng, Vụ Bản district, Nam Định province. His real name was Nho. But in the Vietnamese way, people called him by the name of his ninth child, Thọ, and that name stayed with him.

Nine children. A crowded family, with children’s voices calling out all day long.

He worked collecting taxes for the village. But he never took bribes and never skimmed anything from the people. To feed nine children, he grew mulberries, raised silkworms, reeled silk and farmed rice. The extra money he earned he did not keep all for himself. He used it to help the poor and to support the common needs of the village.

He taught his children something they probably remembered all their lives:

“Living justly is not enough; there must be charity too.”

Justice is not taking what belongs to others. Charity is giving away what belongs to you. Thọ lived both.

When Emperor Minh Mạng’s ban on the faith came down, the presbytery of Kẻ Báng was in danger of being destroyed. Thọ brought his whole family and all his farm tools to live in the presbytery. The presbytery became an ordinary family home. No one had any excuse to tear down a house where a family was living.

He also took priests and catechists into his home in the years of persecution.

As the persecution drew nearer, he called his children together and told them:

“If God lets your father follow in the footsteps of those two holy men, be glad. As for you, if you are arrested, have courage and hold fast to the faith.”

He had prepared his children in advance, so that if it happened, they would not be too frightened.

In 1840, soldiers surrounded Kẻ Báng. Thọ was arrested at the village communal hall, together with the headman John Baptist Trần Ngọc Cỏn and three priests: Father Paul Ngân, Father Joseph Nghi and Father Martin Thịnh. All were put in the cangue and taken to Nam Định for the crime of sheltering priests.

At home, his wife and nine children, who had moved into the presbytery with him, now had to stay on alone.

The mandarin ordered the two laymen to step over the cross. When the soldiers carried them across the holy image, they drew up their feet and told the mandarin that faith lives in the heart, and that being forced when the heart does not consent is no sin.

On November 8, 1840, Martin Thọ was beheaded at the Bảy Mẫu execution ground, together with the headman Cỏn and the three priests. His body and Cỏn’s were taken back to Kẻ Báng.

He was beatified on May 27, 1900, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is November 8.

The image of Thọ’s family moving into the presbytery is a beautiful one. Nine children running about the presbytery courtyard, their mother cooking rice in the presbytery kitchen, plows and hoes stacked in a corner of the presbytery. The house of God was saved, not by swords, but by an ordinary family.

And the words he taught his children still hold true for every family today: living justly is not enough; there must be charity too.